The clearest description I have managed so far about my blog is that it is not about cats. In general, I find predators pretty predictable while prey on the other-hand, because they live in universes of anxiety, develop more textured personalities. I also have as a writer a deft hand when it comes to making matters worse, so of course , the already panicky are ready made for me. I will try to grow this blog into an assortment of laughs, because that is what my life has mostly taught me to do. I will use the famous people I have known to get your attention and then tell you small but many times wonderful things about them. I will never name the ones I say ugly things about but I hope you will guess who they are.

Serves Him Right

by Regis Boff

Our neighbor next door had a son who was three years older than me. I was as big as he, but three grades below him. One winter he began stealing my hat and knocking me down on the way home from school. I would be crying when I came in. The boy would later throw my hat on the patio. My dad would make me go get it. We could hear the boy laughing. This continued on and off for months.
One afternoon, my father dragged me crying out onto the patio between our houses and screamed for him to come out and fight me. He did not come out.
The hat stealing stopped, and my father and I settled gloomily into that lost regard that fathers and sons often quietly endure.
Over the next two years I grew. That boy did not. One afternoon we got into a fight. I picked him up and tossed him down a hillside, breaking his leg.
I went home afterward sick about what I had done and what my father would do to me. He was sitting in his chair reading his newspaper when I told him. He lowered the paper and looked at me. “Serves him right,” he said returning to the paper.
Years later I returned home to visit my mother; my father now dead. I ran into that boy on the patio between our houses and we sat, both grown men now and talked about how we grew up.
He was friendly and nice though still none too bright.
We said our goodbyes, and as I got up to leave, I grabbed his hat.